Ugh, as a teacher, I'm going to take the opposite stance of gimmepie and say that even with great formative assessment, homework is necessary and has more benefits than given credit for. I honestly don't feel like some deep education theories/arguments, so let's keep it short. I'm surprised no one mentioned how one aspect of school is not just for pure knowledge but rather building of character that's beneficial to society. *ONE aspect* of that is really to have the grit and perseverance to keep working on a task that's challenging and acknowledge that we may have to distribute out of school time to handle a school task.

It works in the other way too: we also distribute school time to do out-of-school tasks. We do it all the time and no one has problems with it: we take school off to travel for example. So now suddenly the reverse is a huge issue and is considered waste of time or school is being 'inefficient' if school asks students to use some of their time to do school-related matters too?

If we can't finish a task that's given to us, we take responsibility and finish what we started. How annoying it is that new university hires do not remotely see any problem in not calling in work if sick, giving schedules/availabilities on time cause they "forgot", or taking some part of their job home to get it done by due time for... it's as if some of them never had to do it to begin with and never heard of such things already.

NOTE: if i'm not making sense, I blame 4:11am at night.

I was peaking from a strictly educational standpoint not even considering character building (guess I have a bit to learn still). That being said I feel as though (now thinking of character building) it should be more of a balanced situation than homework as a given. If a student is falling behind or not completing work I see nothing wrong with homework being given out, it is only as an education supplement I have a problem with it. I can't help but think though, if parents help as much as many people feel they do, how will it benefit the child? Still forgetting the parent issue it probably is a good character building tool, even if it is less effective than in-class formative practices for assessment purposes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patchisou Yutohru

You know, I read the article, and what concerns me most about this isn't the fact that he's removing homework (though I disagree with that decision nearly completely), it's that he's going the Bush route and reducing the number of students who repeat school years because they're inadequate. What on earth is that going to solve, other than pushing a student who hasn't yet grasped easier material and moving them onto harder material? They did that with my brother, because of that No Child Left Behind Act, and now I can safely say he knows very little information that should be common knowledge at this point for high school graduates. That isn't helping a student, that's crippling them in their futures.

Abolishing homework will only work properly if the time spent in school is spent actually doing something valuable with their time, and even then, homework serves a lot more purpose than work outside of the classroom. It reinforces the information taught that day and it teaches students to prioritize their important work and prepares them for the real work world. Cramming all the information in at once isn't going to help students know what they need to know. They need to be able to practice it outside of the classroom, on their own, in order for them to grasp it properly and for it to sink in. If someone truly believes that schoolwork should be kept in school, then I have to say that their logic is truly flawed. School prepares students for jobs where work outside of work is expected of employees. If they're stripped of that fundamental aspect of work, they're going to have a lot more difficulty adjusting to that when it comes down to it.

That's true of high-school, I agree that homework is important in later years for the purpose of preparation for tertiary study or work. In Primary/Elementary and early Middle School this is less true. The younger you are the less ability to maintain an interest in your work and maintain focus. It is more effective to give shorter engaging lessons than prattling lessons and mountains of homework. As I said above the younger you are the less homework should be relied upon to improve the quality of your learning, it shouldn't be used as a supplement for in-class time unless the child is falling behind or not completing work in class.

Sorry for The Great Wall of Text but I find this topic very interesting. I hope I'm not appearing too argumentative or "know-it-all" like whilst expressing my views I'm unsure how this sounds to other people who read it.

I don't find it to be a bad thing to appear like a know-it-all and really, it's a good thing to be passionate about what you're studying. Nothing worse than you being in post-secondary and still got no vague clue about what you want to do in the future. If you like to dwell further into the topic, I'll be happy to PM you after this Thursday (tons of work all due on Thursday so lol, we'll chat after all of that mess XD)

I firmly believe that if the homework is of good quality, there should be no ill-feeling about homework being a waste of time or it has no purpose as education supplement. If anything from the sound of those who opposes homework, it feels like their past personal experience suggests that homework wasn't ever handy in 10+ years of education, so most likely all homework can do is cause misery. It will take a very long time, but if you're fortunate enough to have a good teacher with *good homework* (yes, such thing exist in my opinion), I think that you'll have a good change of mind.

It's rather funny that teacher education has a course dedicated to assessments (think "tests" for those who are no longer in school or wasn't raised with the current education lingo), but there's never anything about *how* to give homework. New teachers know a lot of theories about tests... and nothing about homework. I was quite fortunate to have a highly authoritative figure in western Canadian education assessment world as my professor about homework and tests, and it's quite an eye opening experience what proper homework is *SUPPOSED* to do, and sadly most students never got to experience it. (or, refused to do it anyway, sigh)

This is a weird one. I think that Homework could be reduced, but instead of having a longer School day, we could have shorter holidays. Homework is quite important though, independent work in which you have a deadline to finish this in. I think as a school child, you are completely capable of doing this. During my school life, I found that the lazier people were the ones not doing their homework. The ones that sat around and couldn't give a Monkey's about their homework. Homework lets us to think about what we have done at School, what we learnt, and really sink in. Plus, as I mentioned, the idea of it being independent work that has a deadline gets us prepared for what a job is like. It requires similar skills and gives you a good indication on how you can work by yourself.

Homework is down to the student and encourages education. Not everyone focuses in class and being able to do work at home independently lets you fully engage in the subject.

I think that education should be becoming more serious, I think there is a lot of leniency in the way a lot of people are taught and the students who were never the most intelligent of people are not getting as much attention to learning as they need. A lot of the 'dumber' pupils aren't always sought out for and that's why we get higher unemployment rates. People aren't working as hard and getting a job is becoming increasingly harder. I say we stick to homework, stick to school hours but have more school days in which we can encourage students to work hard and help them understand the current situation with unemployment.

There has been a bit of debate on how we should bring back the style of learning they had a few decades ago, when they really were able to bring out the best of people such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. Maybe there was just a smaller world to fill with all these new famous inventions. I'm not saying we should bring back whips or whatever but have something that keeps us working hard and making sure we understand everything. As a 14-year-old I may not have given the best of a discussion point but there we go...

There has been a bit of debate on how we should bring back the style of learning they had a few decades ago, when they really were able to bring out the best of people such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. Maybe there was just a smaller world to fill with all these new famous inventions. I'm not saying we should bring back whips or whatever but have something that keeps us working hard and making sure we understand everything. As a 14-year-old I may not have given the best of a discussion point but there we go...

I don't think we necessarily need to go back to an older style of education, but what we do need to do, as a society, is value education like many other countries do.

keeping students in school until 5 or 6 pm would not only help educate them in a school setting but would be easier for parents to pick them up from school with those hours as well, without concern for babysitters or making sure they get home alright, particularly for elementary level students.[/FONT]

Elementary is fine and understandable. However I had no problems keeping myself busy at elementary school, and I went to and from school alone from day one.
I'm not sure how keeping them until 5 pm would help. It seems to be more like a headache to me.

If you want to improve schools, terminate the thing called "tenure". I heard numerous stories about teachers that don't care at all because tenure gives them immunity to to being fired. I wonder how different it would be when their job is at stake.

It's nice that people are talking about trying to better the educational system. For this to work, I think you'd need to integrate the role homework plays into the school day. I'm not sure this could be done effectively; certainly not on the first try (and it NEEDS to be right the first time or entire generations suffer for it).

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